Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

yet living? It was answered him, Yes. To
what a devil, then, said he, serve so many paltry
heaps and bundles of papers and copies which you give
me? Is it not better to hear their controversy
from their own mouths whilst they are face to face
before us, than to read these vile fopperies, which
are nothing but trumperies, deceits, diabolical cozenages
of Cepola, pernicious slights and subversions of equity?
For I am sure that you, and all those through whose
hands this process has passed, have by your devices
added what you could to it pro et contra in such sort
that, although their difference perhaps was clear
and easy enough to determine at first, you have obscured
it and made it more intricate by the frivolous, sottish,
unreasonable, and foolish reasons and opinions of Accursius,
Baldus, Bartolus, de Castro, de Imola, Hippolytus,
Panormo, Bertachin, Alexander, Curtius, and those
other old mastiffs, who never understood the least
law of the Pandects, they being but mere blockheads
and great tithe calves, ignorant of all that which
was needful for the understanding of the laws; for,
as it is most certain, they had not the knowledge either
of the Greek or Latin tongue, but only of the Gothic
and barbarian. The laws, nevertheless, were
first taken from the Greeks, according to the testimony
of Ulpian, L. poster. de origine juris, which we likewise
may perceive by that all the laws are full of Greek
words and sentences. And then we find that they
are reduced into a Latin style the most elegant and
ornate that whole language is able to afford, without
excepting that of any that ever wrote therein, nay,
not of Sallust, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Titus Livius,
nor Quintilian. How then could these old dotards
be able to understand aright the text of the laws
who never in their time had looked upon a good Latin
book, as doth evidently enough appear by the rudeness
of their style, which is fitter for a chimney-sweeper,
or for a cook or a scullion, than for a jurisconsult
and doctor in the laws?

Furthermore, seeing the laws are excerpted out of
the middle of moral and natural philosophy, how should
these fools have understood it, that have, by G—­,
studied less in philosophy than my mule? In respect
of human learning and the knowledge of antiquities
and history they were truly laden with those faculties
as a toad is with feathers. And yet of all this
the laws are so full that without it they cannot be
understood, as I intend more fully to show unto you
in a peculiar treatise which on that purpose I am
about to publish. Therefore, if you will that
I take any meddling in this process, first cause all
these papers to be burnt; secondly, make the two gentlemen
come personally before me, and afterwards, when I shall
have heard them, I will tell you my opinion freely
without any feignedness or dissimulation whatsoever.